Using Technology, Building Democracy: Digital Campaigning and the Construction of Citizenship (Oxford Studies in Digital Politics)

"The strength of Jessica Baldwin-Philippi's book lies in the rich ethnographic observations that she draws from her experience working in a campaign office. Through her fieldwork analysis and particularly through her innovative mapping of campaign microtargeting strategies she shows how the technological breakthroughs of 2008 have been adopted successfully at the local level. Her book will be required reading for anyone interested in the impact of technology on U.S. elections." -Philip N. Howard, author of The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Information Technology and Political Islam "Baldwin-Philippi's book fills an important gap in political communication scholarship by showing how political campaigns in practice construct a role for citizens to play in electoral politics. Her careful ethnographic analysis of state-level races in 2010, the revealing interviews with campaign staffers between 2010 and 2011, and the content analysis of a multitude of campaign materials allow her to share the real practices and genuine challenges that confront campaigns as they structure political participation in the digital age." -Jennifer Stromer-Galley, author of Presidential Campaigning in the Internet Age "In this ambitious book, Jessica Baldwin-Philippi analyzes digital communications in political contests far from the spotlight of presidential campaigns. The result is a rich and nuanced picture of the strategies and values of campaigners and new practices of citizenship that shape democratic life in the digital age." -Daniel Kreiss, author of Taking Our Country Back: The Crafting of Networked Politics from Howard Dean to Barack Obama "If you want to move past the hype and learn how social media tools are actually changing American campaigns, this is the book for you." -David Karpf, author of The MoveOn Effect: The Unexpected Transformation of American Political Advocacy

The days of "revolutionary" campaign strategies are gone. The extraordinary has become ordinary, and campaigns at all levels, from the federal to the municipal, have realized the necessity of incorporating digital media technologies into their communications strategies. Still, little is understood about how these practices have been taken up and routinized on a wide scale, or the ways in which the use of these technologies is tied to new norms and understandings of political participation and citizenship in the digital age. The vocabulary that we do possess for speaking about what counts as citizenship in a digital age is limited.

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in a federal-level election, interviews with communications and digital media consultants, and textual analysis of campaign materials, this book traces the emergence and solidification of campaign strategies that reflect what it means to be a citizen in the digital era. It identifies shifting norms and emerging trends to build new theories of citizenship in contemporary democracy. Baldwin-Philippi argues that these campaign practices foster engaged and skeptical citizens. But, rather than assess the quality or level of participation and citizenship due to the use of technologies, this book delves into the way that digital strategies depict what "good" citizenship ought to be and the goals and values behind the tactics.